I’ve been on a bit of Bollywood kick lately. I’m currently re-watching Don, which I watched a long time ago. But I haven’t seen Don 2 and wanted to catch it before it leaves Netflix, so I’m reacquainting myself with the movie despite remembering it fairly well.
The two movies I watched over the holiday weekend were Crew and Shehzada. Crew was amusing. Three women work for an Indian airline, aren’t getting paid, and decide to start smuggling gold. Eventually the airline goes bust as the well-off owners abscond with the assets. At that point, the movie takes a turn and the women start to develop a conscience. I preferred the first half where they didn’t worry about the consequences, other than to themselves, and were busy bonding with each other. It had a working-class versus owners vibe. Where they tried to be blatant about it, I don’t think it worked as well. Where it snuck in like the chairman of the airline complaining about his taxes while living it up, and the flight crew commenting on taxes while trying to keep kids in school, food on the table, and elderly parents cared for…that was much more on point. It was a nice parallel that highlighted the ridiculousness of the owner class concerns about taxes.
A small nitpick. I did not like the scene where they went to the middle east to Oceans 8 the gold, and the Bollywood dance scene involved women in beaded face veils that were very middle eastern in nature. Although it did push the point that the chairman (and lackeys) had fled there for a life of debauchery in a place known for religious anti-debauchery. So perhaps I had less of an issue with the veils than an issue with that the whole scene didn’t seem too far off as far as wealth-related hypocrisy in all things.
If you draw the lines, you’ll see that the next movie I watched, Shehzada, has an actor in common. Kriti Sanon. She reminds me a little of a cross between Anuskha Sharma and Alia Bhatt. I enjoyed her in Crew, but she pretty much vanished after the first part of Shehzada. Short version / TLDR; don’t watch Shehzada. That’s a bad movie. Although in some ways it was an interesting foil compared to Crew.
It’s a classic mixed up babies story, although in this case the not-so-poor dad purposefully swaps his son with the rich son and almost kills the nurse in the process, putting her in a coma for 25 years. The kids grow up and there’s a gangster subplot, but as near as I can tell the WHOLE theme is wealthy genes will win out over poor genes. The poor kid in the wealthy household is named Raj and the rich kid in the poor household is named Bantu, to further stress their innate qualities coming through despite their circumstances.
Rich kid made poor, Bantu, he can fight like a superhero for no reason we understand. He can give relationship advice, for no reason we can understand (and people innately listen to him, for no reason we can understand). He can pick up Kriti Sanon the lawyer by working for her as an intern, for no reason we’re ever made to understand other than “it just happened”. And he can pretty much ignore her for 2/3 of the movie as she vanishes, and she still wants to marry him. That all-over-the-place no real rationale for anything feels like it applies to the whole movie which is haphazard and hops from scene to scene in many way.
I don’t think I’ll ruin it for anyone, but the ending is also completely unsatisfying. It’s tied up with a neat bow. The poor son made rich, he finds his path via the rich son made poor and he overcomes his genes with the help of the “prince’s” advice. The poor dad, who basically murdered a nurse who dies after 25 years in a coma and spends that time bring her apples once a year to make sure she doesn’t talk...he mends his relationship with the son he stole and comes out ahead at the end. The only people who lose out are the gangsters who get beat up to a soundtrack pushing the Prince-ness of the son.
There’s also a scene where all the help/servants from the rich estate dance and sing when the misplaced kid comes back for the first time (when no one knows he’s the real heir). In their working clothes and some of them in band uniforms (wtf) they praise him, he praises himself, and they make a little crown for him out of their hands repeatedly. I love Bollywood numbers. I hated that one.
Positives? Kriti at one point early on, while talking to Bantu in a cafe, makes this clicking acknowledgment noise that is so sexy I had to go back to see why it caught my attention. Sometimes you have to find the little bits of enjoyment in a movie when the rest of it is awful. Kartik Aaryan (Bantu) also does a fun little moon walk with his butt in the closing number that my wife and I debated about because it wasn’t obvious if he had a wire attached to his back. Regardless, it was a cool dance move/visual.
I went letterboxing afterwards and discovered Shehzada was a huge flop. So it wasn’t just me. My favorite review, and I paraphrase, was about Kartik Aaryan in the movie who gave a lackluster perforamnce, “Shehzada was proof you don’t need a nepobaby to ruin a movie.”
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